Lucas: Every Night

By Adam Lucas

CORAL GABLES—Go ahead and say it.

Hubert Davis paused during his Tar Heel Sports Network postgame interview.

"I don't know if I'm supposed to say this," he told Jones Angell. "But I'm going to. ACC Player of the Year, National Player of the Year, all of those things. I feel bad what I ask RJ to do every night. And not only does he do that, he brings it in practice. He's one of those special players that I'm blessed to be around. His impact on this program, this team and this game was huge."

So what exactly did RJ Davis do? He guarded Nigel Pack for most of the second half. That was no small assignment, considering that Pack had torched the Tar Heels for 18 points in the first half. Most of those baskets swished directly through the heart of the net. So when the game got close, on an afternoon when both teams desperately needed a win, there was no doubt what was going to happen: Pack was going to get the ball, and Davis was going to have to stop him.

It's one thing to score 25 points (oh yeah, Davis also pumped in a game-high 25 points) while resting on defense. It's quite another to play 39 minutes, score 25 points, and defend the other team's best player every trip down the court in situations where you know for certain he is getting the ball.

"I was trying to make his catches tough," Davis said on the THSN. "He was hot in the first half, and he was getting to the spots where he wanted to. I had to take some pride defensively in cooling him off. I wanted to get into his body on stagger screens and make it tough for him."

Look, we know Davis isn't physically imposing. But he has a way of defending that makes it uncomfortable for the man he's guarding. He always seems to have a hand in the face and always is impeding the path to the basket. If he's not going to the floor to save a loose ball, as he did in the first half, he's stripping an opposing big man near the rim, as he did just a few possessions later.

That's why his head coach should feel fine talking about big-time individual honors. RJ Davis isn't just having a great scoring year. He's having a great year, period--one worthy of consideration for every award you can find. He's not so impressed with his shooting that he minds getting a couple floor burns in pursuit of a loose ball.

"I just want it," Davis said. "It's not all about scoring with me. It's about impacting the game and helping the team. Grab rebounds, get 50-50 balls. It's about my overall play and it also helps get my teammates going. If they see me doing that and diving on the ball, it helps their energy."

Troubled by both Davis and an injury, Pack went just 1-for-8 in the second half, an important change in a game the Tar Heels won by just three points. Time after time, Miami tried to get Pack free offensively. Time after time, Davis and his teammates cut off any openings.

Jim Larranaga called his last timeout with 2:29 left in a 72-67 game. Everyone knew exactly what was about to happen, and there was only one reason why he would have burned the crucial last timeout at this juncture: he wanted to ensure his best player took the shot, and Pack was going to get the ball. Davis, of course, had the defensive assignment. And as he did for most of the second half, he helped force a contested, tough shot that missed the mark.

The Tar Heels were also helped by a sideline adjustment after the first half that changed the way Miami was able to run its offense.

"On any ball screen dribble handoff, we doubled Pack to get the ball out of his hands," said Hubert Davis. "We were going to make someone else make some shots. We didn't have an answer for him in the first half. We had to try something different and it worked."

It's true that RJ Davis' minutes have increased. In addition to his 39 on Saturday, he played 38 against both Duke and Clemson, and he's played more than 35 minutes in six of the last eight games. Some of those big minutes are caused by the absence of Seth Trimble the last two games. But the primary reason is pretty simple: the Tar Heels absolutely must have RJ Davis on the court. Every night, every game, on virtually every possession.

Think about it: any time the game is close, any time you need a basket, any time you need…well, anything really—the first thought in your mind is always the same: Get it to RJ.

And, as his head coach said, he's doing it every night. On his "off" nights—like against Duke—he still gets 17 points. His lowest output in an ACC game is 14 points. Somewhere UC Riverside should feel great about themselves, because they somehow held him to eight points back in November, his only single-digit effort of this season.

He simply does whatever, whenever you need it. He'd been uncharacteristically merely above average at the free throw line recently, so all he did Saturday was go 8-for-8 while the rest of his teammates went 8-for-16.

What else can he do?

Davis was perusing the stat sheet, one eye still a little swollen from a few recent in-game bumps, in the immediate aftermath of the game. He saw the 25 points and the seven rebounds and the five assists and the two steals in his 39 minutes. Then he saw something else.

"Hey," he said, "I had a block!"

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RJ Davis

Seth Trimble

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